Google updates Fit with guided breathing exercise, just in time for the holidays
With the holiday season almost upon us - and gift buying well underway - Google has updated its Fit application with a guided breathing exercise to help keep us all calm.
As well as a new breathing application for Wear OS smartwatches, Google has updated the Fit smartphone app, bringing a widget to the Android home screen for the first time.
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This means health data like Heart Points and Move Points can be viewed with a glance of your handset, instead of by digging into the Fit app or notification page. As well as your points earned for the day, the home screen widget can display your step count, distance walked, and calories burned.
Rolling out this week, the new guided breathing app for Fit on Wear OS follows similar apps available on the Apple Watch and Samsung wearables. These remind you several times during the day to take a break, then use the display and vibration motor to tell you went to breathe deeply in and out.
Also new is how your most recent workout is shown on the Fit app's home screen, where you can manually adjust your activity intensity and be rewarded the appropriate amount of Heart Points. This will be useful if you find your smartwatch is underestimate how hard you're working in the gym - but don't go cheating…
While the guided breathing app only really serves to bring Google into line with health apps from Apple and Samsung, we look the new Android widgets. It's an obvious move to put this data on the home screen, but now with it front-and-center on our phones, we might be more inclined to increase our health points, instead of tapping on Instagram for yet another scroll of the newsfeed.
